The Mentor: A Memoir of Friendship and Gay Identity - Softcover

Quinn, Jay

3.45

22 ratings by Goodreads

9781560239376: The Mentor: A Memoir of Friendship and Gay Identity

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560239379 ISBN 13: 9781560239376

Publisher: Routledge, 2000

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Examine a moving, personal narrative about growing up gay in the south!

Students, teachers, and anyone interested in gay studies and experiences will find that The Mentor: A Memoir of Friendship and Gay Identity (a 2001 Lambda Literary Foundation Gay Male Biography/Autobiography Award finalist) delivers a captivating and honest look into the challenges of growing up gay through the context of firsthand experiences, revelations, and realizations. This unique book is an intelligent and personal narrative that considers the social, religious, and emotional aspects of what it is like to grow up as a gay male in the south and examines the enormous social changes regarding homosexuality that have taken place in America during the last half of the century.

Written to reveal the importance of the author's mentor in helping him form his self-identity and educating him about being gay, this book challenges the stereotypical idea that, unlike heterosexuals, gay men are not able to form nurturing, fulfilling bonds between themselves. The Mentor delivers an inspiring story about accepting and understanding your sexuality with the help and guidance of other men who have traveled the road to a successful gay identity.

This unique book offers the courage, strength, and support of a mentor to help guide you through the trials that many young gay men experience, such as:

recognizing the possibilities of exploitation by older gay men due to a lack of emotional and social experience
creating a loyal relationship with a man that does not include sex but which satisfies emotional needs that many gay men need and long for
discovering the importance of a mentor to gay youths, since there are few homosexual role models to learn from

Sincere and well-written, The Mentor provides insight into everything from the author's experience with intolerance of homosexuality by certain religions to struggles with fidelity and infidelity, illustrating the difficult yet universal challenges of life relationships. The Mentor contains suggestions that will help you recognize that your feelings of desire and love and your quest for human connection as a gay man are not the distorted reflections of a heterosexual image, but a healthy gay identity. With this unique book, you will discover how to make the shift from confusion to full acceptance of your gay identity, you will understand that you are not alone, and perhaps you will be encouraged to pass on the legacy of a mentor to other young gay men.

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From the Publisher:

Discover the impact a mentor can have on a young gay man's life!

Review:

"Jay Quinn's exploration of the mentoring process within the gay community -of being taken under a wing, of being taught by the more mature, of learning from someone trusted -shines with honest grace. He's taken the very personal and amplified it into an exemplar for a community which has a lengthy, noble tradition of the older guiding the younger; but it's a tradition not much honored in our writing or in our public lives. This memoir, candid and Humane, intimate and witty, is an eloquent recognition of what one generation can teach another." -- Richard Labonte, General Manager, A Different Light Bookstores, San Francisco, California

"When you read Jay Quinn's THE MENTOR, it's as if you're reading a book written by two different men, complimentary and sympatico. One is a Southern storyteller, the kind that has made the South famous for its rich literary history -you can hear Quinn spinning a yarn up on the front porch, offering any number of juicy scandalous stories, confiding a couple of secrets, keeping a couple more to himself. And there's another writer, a thoughtful scholar who knows how to tell a tale on the page as well as the porch, who can look at his own life with enough wisdom to convey to others what he has learned. And that is what THE MENTOR is all about -teaching and telling each other effortlessly, the reader and writer at once protege and professor." -- Brian Bouldrey, Writer and editor, San Francisco, California

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